Increased Flexibility, Lower Costs for Farmers, Merchants

CME Group's Short-Dated New-Crop grain options are gaining traction, reducing costs for farmers and merchants and giving them greater flexibility to respond to market-moving events, such as weekend weather shifts and Agriculture Department crop reports, DTN reported.

Linked to benchmark futures contracts such as November soybeans and December corn, short-dated options access a narrower time frame for protection that matches up to points in the growing season when the user is most at risk. Cutting down on the "time value" reduces the option's price compared to standard options. Other similar, recently-launched CME Group contracts include serial and weekly grain options.

"The reality is that I'm going to know either when the crop is in, or the crop is up, or when it's pollinated, pretty much what the market is going to do," Tim Andriesen, CME Group's director of agriculture commodities and alternative investment, told DTN Markets Editor Katie Micik. "If something bad is going to happen, for the most part it's not going to happen in the fall, it's going to happen in the summer."

Launched in May 2012, short-dated grain options "are going to be a big hit," Water Street Solutions CEO and President Darren Frye said. The contracts allow farmers "flexibility around how to protect his base price, how to protect the crop going into pollination, how to protect the crop through pollination."

Read more about CME Group's Short-Dated New-Crop Options.

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